Jon McClure creates business model that sticks

Businessman used a niche market to bring his company into everyone's home

Dec. 1, 2013

Jon McClure, right, started ISO Polyfilms in Gray Court in 1996. His son, Taylor, who also works at ISO, says part of his dad's success stems from the fact that he runs the company more like a coach than a boss. / KEN OSBURN / Staff

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Hanging on the wall in Jon McClure’s spacious office is an easel pad, the white of its pages aged to a murky yellow. Scrawled across the top in ink that, once black, now looks more purple are the words “core principles.”

What follows is a list of words that have been McClure’s guiding philosophy ever since he started his business, ISO Poly Films, in 1997. The list itself has been hanging there as a reminder for nigh on a dozen years, he says.

With the hum of manufacturing machinery an omnipresent backdrop, McClure explains that he has worked over the years to meet a standard of success that means success for more than just himself and his company.

“We want to make lots of money — there’s nothing wrong with that — but we don’t want to be where we’re the only ones who win,” he says.

McClure, 53, founded ISO Poly Films, which makes a variety of plastic films used in products like food packaging and duct-tape backing, out of frustration with another business’ unethical practices. And he says he has since made a point of taking every step possible to make sure his company becomes “world class.”

Core principles

The list of core principles on McClure’s wall reads, from top to bottom: customers, people, community, vendors, shareholder value.

Business school, he says, will teach you to put shareholder value above everything else. But he believes it works better to work from the opposite perspective, taking care of the needs of customers, employees, the local community and vendors.

After all that, “there ought to be more than enough for the shareholders,” he says.

Though he claims a reputation of being hard to work for, primarily because of high expectations, McClure speaks warmly about his employees and about the community he and they inhabit.

He’s loaned money for workers to get their cars fixed and gives them time off to pursue volunteer work in the community. And according to son Taylor McClure, every employee gets a birthday card with $20 cash from the boss man.

“This is not just a place that you make money. It’s a lighthouse to the community,” Jon McClure says.

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Taylor says his dad is more like a coach than a traditional “hammer down” boss, and McClure, too, says he draws on his own youthful time in sports as a guide.

“Somebody jumps off sides, it hurts the whole team so the whole teams runs a lap. Those are good lessons to learn,” McClure says. “I still use the same saying my coaches used to use.”

Former lawyer and long-time ministry leader Robert Dobson says he chose to invest in ISO from the outset of the company because he could see in McClure the kind of Christian-based philosophy that is central to his own life.

“I wish I were surrounded by more people like Jon,” Dobson says. “He has strived from the very beginning to maintain a workplace where people did things the right way.”

'Just quick studies'

McClure’s path to the CEO’s office began in his last job when, as a supplier’s representative, he was at a meeting along with a vendor and a large customer. They were trying to solve a quality problem that had arisen.

“My vendor was sitting beside me lying to the customer, and that really made me mad,” McClure says.

It wasn’t long after that that he decided to go his own way. He began to read a massive study about the plastics industry known as the Mastio Report. The report breaks down all the major markets for plastics manufacturing into chapters, with the final chapter focused on smaller niche markets.

“I just homed in on that last chapter,” McClure says.

A self-described salesman and entrepreneur, McClure says he learned about the technical aspects of his business primarily on the job.

When suppliers would come to the plant for meetings, he would ask to learn about every single one of their products.

“I want to know why it works, what it does, how it does. I want to learn the chemistry. So they taught me,” he said. “I don’t think we’re inventors here. We’re just quick studies.”

McClure decided to carve out a spot in the market by tackling the problems no one else wanted to.

“If I fix your biggest problem, will you do business with me?” he would ask manufacturers.

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He started with duct tape, where certain materials used in manufacturing were creating logistical nightmares for producers. He solved it.

“To this day, we don’t have a patent on it,” he says. “It’s like Coca-Cola. It’s a secret formula, and we’ve never told anybody how we do it.”

He was quickly a success and is today the largest manufacturer of duct-tape backing — the non-sticky side of the tape — in the world.

“Each year, we make enough film in duct tape that when it’s (cut to) 2 inches wide, you can wrap it around the world 22 times,” he says.

Today, duct-tape film is about 10 percent of ISO’s business, with packaging, wrappers and other consumer and industrial applications taking up the other 90 percent of the 80 to 90 million pounds of film churned out every year at the Gray Court plant.

“I’m 100 percent sure every person who’s going to read this article has products that we have made in our plant in South Carolina in their home,” McClure says, no small measure of pride in his voice.

“I can pretty much say that for every house in America.”

Scratching an itch

McClure says he inherited his entrepreneurial bent from his father, who started International Plastics, a manufacturer where McClure worked for years and which is now run by three of McClure’s siblings.

“The earliest I can remember, my father said, you don’t want to work for a corporation. You want to own the corporation,” says McClure, who was recognized as the Carolinas Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2001 and South Carolina Ambassador for Economic Development in 2002.

He first cut his teeth on several small ventures — gigs like mowing lawns and publishing — before founding ISO.

As a teen, McClure started a mowing business and was at one point tending to 16 lawns.

“I was a big shot,” he says with a laugh.

He recalls having to borrow $542 from his father when the motor on his riding lawn mower blew up.

And he says his sister, Carolyn Robinson, loaned him $5,000 to start a sports-centric publication based on the Leonard’s Losers syndicated radio show.

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McClure also had run a side business during his time at International Plastics, but ISO was his first big leap to becoming an independent entrepreneur.

McClure says he had $1,200 in cash when he decided to start his business. It was the initial $600,000 investment from Dobson that allowed McClure to borrow millions more to build his facility. Today, ISO is in partnership with a large plastics group, Sigma Plastics — a pairing that has allowed the company to grow to house $50 million worth of equipment and employ about 130 in the state.

ISO also recently opened a second facility in Vancouver, Wash., where another 30 work.

McClure says he’s starting to give some thought to what his next venture will be — entrepreneurs don’t like to stay in one place too long, after all. “We’re itchy. We like to build. We don’t really like to operate.”

But, he says, he’s got work to finish at ISO first.

“That’s why I still come to work. It’s not for the money,” he says. “I want this company to be world class.”

For all his success, McClure gives every indication of being a humble man. He lives in the North Main home he’s lived in for 30 years, one that was originally built by his grandfather after World War II.

“I come home and I sleep in the bed. If it was a $2 million home, I’d still sleep in the same bed,” he says. “I’ve been around the world. Most people today are going to go to bed without clean water and something to eat.”

He’s very active in the Boys Home of the South and said he’s seen some uplifting and some heartbreaking stories there, like the one boy who hoarded all the food he could in his backpack because he’d come from a drug-riddled home where food was hard to come by.

“I’ve got more than I need, and I plan to give it away between now and when I die,” McClure says.